Montgomery's U.S. District Court: A History

Video Overview

In his presentation Riser will explore the district court from its earliest days as the United States Court for the Tombigbee District of the Mississippi Territory through the 1940s and the earliest days of the modern civil rights movement. He will visit the personalities of some of the judges, including Harry Toulmin (the man who arraigned Vice-president Aaron Burr for treason), Richard Busteed (the carpetbagger judge who was widely considered to be the most corrupt man in Alabama), former governor Thomas Goode Jones (who, as judge, aided an attack on the 1901 Alabama Constitution), and Charles Brents Kennamer (the north Alabama Republican who quietly presided over some of the earliest courtroom skirmishes of the mid-twentieth century civil rights movement).